Why the Dutch Railways give Us a Glimpse of the Future of Transportation
It is difficult to predict if we will all use an autonomous vehicle in the near future. Or if we will be riding hoverboards acros the sidewalks and use the hyperloop to travel from London to Warsaw. But if we analyze and combine a few key ICT trends, we can make a probable prediction for the future of transportation in North Western Europe.
Those ICT trends are: artificial intelligence, digitalization, cloud computing and digital networks. These four trends improve and feed an number of applications, which form the foundation for an intelligent transport network. A transport network that itself is optimized, but those applications also make it possible to have an optimized personal journey from door to door. While taking into account all your personal travel preferences.
Maps, assistants and the Dutch Railways
The applications that are improved by the overarching ICT trends are the following three. Firstly map technology, like Google Maps. Secondly virtual assistants, think of Siri, Google Now or Amazon Echo. And thirdly the business model and information infrastructure of transportation companies like the Dutch Railways. The Dutch Railways you ask? Yes, the Dutch Railways. Just like Google Maps and Siri, the Dutch Railways are not perfect. They have their share of delays and their communication to their customers could use improvement. But when you combine maps, virtual assistants and the changes in a lot of transportation companies you get a glimpse of a probable future.
The development of the Dutch Railways
The Dutch Railways is still transforming from a state owned company, that was mainly focused on driving trains, to a service company that offers you transportation from door to door. Besides traveling by train, they offer services like easy car rental, renting bikes, cheap taxi’s, or cost reduction on other public transport. Using their stations as hubs for all these services. This change in business model is made possible by the before mentioned ICT trends. For instance, digitalization makes it possible for them to expand their portfolio with all these new services. Because digitalization makes it easier and cheaper to do so, for their own organization, as well as their customers.
On the backend they are improving the transport network with the help of increasingly smarter software. These new services and the smart backend can be the basis for an optimized transport network, linking different modes of transport.
The development of map technology
An online map like Google Maps is not just a flat map, but an intelligent tool that can give you the best route to your destination. It doesn’t matter if you are travelling by bike, public transport, or if you want to take the car. And in the advice Google Maps gives you, the application takes the traffic into account and constantly updates your advised route. It is not hard to imagine parties like Google, TomTom, or Audi/BMW/Daimer (HERE maps) developing this further, using advanced cloud computing and artificial intelligence. Creating a map that can give you an even better travel advice, from the moment you wake up to the moment you arrive at your destination. Combining different modes of transportation into a for you ideal mix.
The development of virtual assistants
Virtual assistentes like Sire still make a lot of strange mistakes, but they improve each year. Thanks to the imporvements in cloud computing and artificial intelligence. The assistants have made great progress and you can expect their abilities to improve greatly in the coming years. And travel advice will probably be part of those improving abilities.
Welcome to the metastructure
When you combine the different developments we just mentioned, you see something new emerging, an intelligent, optimized, personal transportation network. In that network you get an ideal travel advice, that you always carry with you and that is always up to date. In an article by the popular technology website Wired they give this intelligent transportation network the catchy name ‘Metastructure’. The article focusses mainly on transportation by car, but that should be expanded to all kinds of transportation. Because a mixed network with different modes of transportation would make the network more resilient and more adaptable to different needs. And this network will constantly improve as the different technologies develop further.
Daydreaming of transportation
And if we give ourselves the freedom to daydream about that metastructure, what would it look like?
Imagine you wake up at 8:00 in the morning in your hotel room in Berlin, woken by the virtual assistant on your wearable. You were woken, because it is time to get ready, if you want to be back in your hometown Chatham in England. You step into the shower, have something to eat, and your virtual assistant asks you “the first part of your trip is by Uber, shall I order one?” You give your permission and the self-driving Uber car pulls up in front of your hotel a few minutes later. While you walk to the car your virtual assistant talks you through the rest of your trip, “the Uber will take you to Berlin Hauptbahnhof, where you will take the ICE train to Essen. In Essen you will transfer to the Thalys train to Brussels, where you will transfer to the Eurostar that will take you to London. When you arrive at the different train stations, I will give you the platform and the exact time of departure.” In the meantime your assistant takes care of the payments for the Uber and the different trains, using the transport budget you assigned to this trip. A few hours later, while you are sitting in the Eurostar to London, the virtual assistant asks you if you would like a ride sharing car to your hometown Chatham, or if you will take the train and a retal bike for the last few miles. You decide to take the train and the bike, mainly because your assistant also told you the weather will be nice and sunny in Southern England. A few minutes later your assistant warns you that there was an accident on the train track between London and Chatham, causing a delay. You decide to take the alternative, a shared ride with Blablacar. Your virtual assistant takes care of it, and not so much later you arrive at home.
You had a good journey, that was optimized to your budget, timing and comfort wishes. There was a delay, but thanks to the power of the network you were able to circumvent it without any trouble. This ideal ride is still a dream, but we can see the different pieces of the puzzle slowly falling into place.
